RSTART(1)

💅 RSTART(1) — the rstart girlies' era 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual entry for rstart — she's a whole mood and she's about to remote-execute some stuff for you. sit down, hydrate, let's go 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

rstart — a sample implementation of a Remote Start client 🌈

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

rstart [-c context] [-g] [-l username] [-v] hostname command args ...

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So rstart is literally a simple implementation of a Remote Start client, exactly as defined in "A Flexible Remote Execution Protocol Based on rsh". periodt. She does the thing by using rsh as her underlying remote execution mechanism — that's the whole vibe, no cap.

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -c context — this one picks the context the command gets run in. a context is basically the general environment the program is meant to live in 🌸. the deets of that environment are host-specific; the whole intent is that you, the client, don't gotta know how the environment needs to be configured. if you skip it, context defaults to X, which should be suitable for running X programs from the host's "usual" X installation ✨
• -g — interprets command as a generic command, as discussed in the protocol document 📜. this is here so common applications can be invoked without you knowing what they're actually called on the remote system. rn the only generic commands defined are Terminal, LoadMonitor, ListContexts, and ListGenericCommands — that's the whole list bestie, don't come for me 💅
• -l username — this one gets passed straight down to the underlying rsh; it requests that the command be run as the specified user 🙈
• -v — this asks rstart to be verbose about her business. without it, rstart discards output from the remote's rstart helper AND tells that helper to detach the program from the rsh connection used to start it. with it, responses from the helper get displayed, and the resulting program is not detached from the connection 👀

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🌸 NOTES 🌸

• This is a trivial implementation. far more sophisticated implementations are possible and should be developed — lowkey a call to action, honestly.
• Error handling is nonexistent 💀. without -v, error reports from the remote are discarded silently. with -v, error reports are displayed.
• The $DISPLAY environment variable is passed. if it starts with a colon, the local hostname gets prepended. the local domain name should be appended to unqualified host names, but isn't 😭.
• The $SESSION_MANAGER environment variable should be passed, but isn't 😭.
• X11 authority information is passed for the current display ✨.
• ICE authority information should be passed, but isn't 😭. it isn't completely clear how rstart should select what ICE authority information to pass.
• Even without -v, the sample rstart helper will leave a shell waiting for the program to complete 🐚. this causes no real harm and consumes relatively few resources, but if it's undesirable you can dodge it by explicitly specifying the "exec" command to the shell, eg

rstart somehost exec xterm

this is obviously dependent on the command interpreter being used on the remote system; the example given will work for the Bourne and C shells 🫶

ngl bestie, read those notes twice. the "should be passed, but isn't" energy is a lot, and the silent error discarding without -v will absolutely humble you if you're not paying attention 🙈

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• rstartd(1)
• rsh(1)
• A Flexible Remote Execution Protocol Based on rsh

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Jordan Brown, Quarterdeck Office Systems — thank you for your service, king 👑

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one shipped as part of X Version 11, sitting at rstart 1.0.6, and that's the vibe check passed ✅ mwah 💅💖🎀🦋